Immortal Openings

Joined
Apr 8, 2009
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Hi all!

I got some sound advice regarding teching on Immortal and I'll use this thread to try to improve my early game. When I was playing on lower levels, I saw I could pretty much do anything that I'd end on the top. Not anymore. So here I am, asking for help.

The objective here is to learn how to claim land, get two great people (especially scientists), remain in tech parity (or lead) and have between 150 and 200 bpt in 1AD.




The first opening we have is with Charlemagne. It's a Fractal map on Normal speed, events and huts on. (I reloaded once because I misclicked and declared war on João). This is where I started:
Spoiler :


I knew it had a useless coastal tile and thought of settling on the wine, but settled in place. This is the empire in 1AD, techs, diplomacy and demographics:
Spoiler :








These are my cities:
Spoiler :













I tried to build the Statue of Zeus in Prague to help fight Indian culture, but I failed because I was farming a scientist at the same time. A mistake I think I made was to start research on Civil Service instead of Music. I am still some workers short and my exploration isn't as good as it should have been. I am competitive techwise and will bulb Philosophy with my second scientist, that will come in 9 turns, but I have only half the bpts I wanted. I built the Great Library in Aachen and that's good. My plan here (I'll play the rest offline) is to switch to Caste and Pacifism, grab Lib, build the Globe Theater and stomp Asoka.

I'm looking forward to seeing what I could have done better.
 

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For comparison, here's my 1AD:

Spoiler :

empire:



techs:



demo:



The starting land isn't so hot, but there's some really nice jungle available. My empire's a bit stretched right now but this game should be pretty easy from here with all the AI at pleased. Tech is 160ish which will fall once I run out of money (wonder failure), and I've only gotten 1 GS so far.

PS: Stupid Asoka beat me to the GL by 1 turn. Grr. That really screwed up my plans for the second GS but oh well.
 

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The objective here is to learn how to claim land, get two great people (especially scientists), remain in tech parity (or lead) and have between 150 and 200 bpt in 1AD.

Hmm, these stats often are meaningless, especially if you are going to lightbulb which most people do.
Spoiler :

Anyhow, I did a run up to 1 AD. I built the Zeus in my draft city, and then I built the S-Paya for early philo, though it really didn't make a damn difference since I stalled in order to burn my artist from music, which was redundant since I hit my first scientist at that point anyway...

I'm up to seven cities now, and will be putting down an 8'th. Though one of my cities got crippled due to IDIOT India trying to squeeze me in a ******ed manner.

I will try and romp over him soon enough...

 

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The starting area is high in hammer potential and relatively low in "easy" commerce. With the great equalizer available I would forget aiming for an early tech rate here and just pound some heads early and often.
 
Spoiler :


North:


South



1st GS -> academy, second comes in 8 turns
After bulbing philosophy I will lead in tech. 6 well developed cities size 5-9

I used small "cheat" - chopped forest and delayed wonder. earned ~250g for fast learning music. nice cultural bomb made after ;D




 
6 cities, not super but my techrate is pretty good, i got the great library in my capitol, the statue of zeus in one border city and the 'all religion civics wonder' in the other border city, so culture is good. Asoka is friendly, the rest has different religion, but one AI that will trade all techs is good for now (played till 25 AD accidently)

land and tech situation in screenshots
 
Well what a blast last night... Completed the game from my last save, things went pretty decent...

Synopsis:
Spoiler :

After getting my curaissers upgraded to cav, I immediately DoW on Indians (who were friendly with me) haha. I also had drafted many muskets before rifling, so they were upgradable on the cheap. This is one of the only times I draft muskets, and also because of protective trait.

Needless to say, I took the capital/shrine city much easier than expected, but I’m usually vs deity SoDs, so I’m not sure if my map was supposed to be hard or not. A few cities more and I had India wanting to capit, but I was greedy and didn’t want vassal culture to revolt me. Unfortunately just on the last turn I was going to eliminate India altogether, he vassals to the Americans. So this dragged me into another war, but it’s fine because I didnt’ lose any cities, and I was able to drag Carthage into that war as well.

Unfortunately, Joao seems to have gotten a bit too much land, and since he was peacefully running away with techs, and space race, I decided to hit off with a BANG, and start nuking right after he finished researching Fusion. I then took quite a few wonders from him I had let him build for me, and then only made peace because I didn’t want to risk him vassaling to someone else again.
After that, I nuked Ottomans (who were backwards) into submission, and then nuked the Native Americans into submission as well. At this point Carthage went weehorn so I got ready. Sure enough he stabs me, but I think I had a hundred negative diplo for nuking friends so it’s understandable. Then after a nasty war, he gave me treats for peace. Then 10 turns later I re-dow, and threw out a ton of more nukes again, despite I was fighting vs his SDI. But this last war DoW was pointless since it seems I was going to win diplo at that point anyhow.... Damn...

I think I may have had -200 for “You nuked us/our friends” in there...

First Nuke


Victory


Wonder Screen


 
Rather than claiming it, how about you give a presentation.

the presentations after seeing map always give false feeling, but once you asked.

Keep in mind i played slightly boozed and without too much effort [connected iron so late:p and did not cared about portugal city management, attacking at lower odds than i npormally do and so on...]. The only bad thing i can see is fact I pushed general tech race pretty high including fact America has philo.

Well, this gives plenty of land [and still a chance to fix some India cities with elepult i guess], with rathauses i could reach lib first.
 

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@Ignorant Teacher

my 2 cents
1. let your cities grow to happy cap before running specialists.
2. start NE right after TGL.
 
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